Danielle Smith is arguing that Alberta is a nation. That's an argument Quebec has been making for a long time. But there are differences between the two provinces. Max Fawcett writes:
While Alberta has all the requisite feelings for nationhood, it’s badly lacking when it comes to the facts. There are no distinct linguistic or cultural characteristics that would clearly distinguish Alberta as a nation, unless you consider the hoser dialect from the mockumentary Fubar to be an accurate representation of the province as a whole.
Unlike Quebec, which existed long before Confederation and had a clearly defined political and legal tradition that set it apart from the rest of what would become Canada, Alberta was part of “Rupert’s Land,” an administrative territory signed over to the Hudson’s Bay Company by King Charles II. Eventually, that land was bought out by the newly formed country of Canada in 1869 for the princely sum of $1.5 million, and Alberta was carved out from it alongside Saskatchewan in 1905.
There is, however, one characteristic that both provinces share -- a seething sense of grievance:
As Alberta Sen. Paula Simons once said, “For better or worse, and often for worse, the culture of grievance is baked into the DNA of this province.”
Things change, however, when a Conservative government is in power in Ottawa:
As political science professor Mike Medeiros wrote in a December 2021 piece for Policy Options, “Political movements that represent actual ‘nations’ do not care much about which party is heading the central government; they are more concerned with preserving and enlarging their autonomy.”
All of Canada's provinces jealously guard their constitutional backyards. But, in Alberta, a Liberal government in Ottawa becomes an existential threat.
Image: FlagMart Canada
